Baked Pears in Red Wine Sauce

Finally winter has arrived complete with sugar frosted trees, a blanket of snow and temperatures low enough to keep you running to stoke the fire. My mind continues to turn to foods that bring comfort on these winter days. Although February has arrived with long anticipated snow and the days are somewhat longer and lighter, comfort dishes still beckon like a siren calling you to crash on the shore.  
Pears figure in often during these comfort seeking days. I'm a huge fan of poaching pears as well as pear cakes and tarts, but I must say that the simplicity of oven baked in red wine till glisteningly caramelized with a luscious gorgeous thick wine sauce underneath that you might find you will want to make a bit more as it is just that tasty. It's a wonderful drizzling sauce to go over ice cream, plain yogurt with bananas or just about anything that strikes your fancy. 

Caramelized Pears in Red Wine sauce
Pere Caramellate in salsa al vino rosso


Serves 6 
easily doubled


Ingredients:
6  Pears, firm variety like Kaiser or Williams,  medium sized, if organic you won't need to peel them
100g (1/2 c) sugar, I like to use a granulated organic raw cane sugar, but regular white is fine
350g (1 1/2c) red wine, I use a barbera or dolcetto table wine. It does't need to be an expensive wine


Method:

• Wash and pat dry. If you prefer you can peel them, but I found them deliciously rustic with the skins on, although you will get more color contrast when peeled. which may be n ice for serving guests.
• Trim the bottom of the pears so they will sit up straight, peel, if desired.
• You might want to use a ceramic baking dish that you can bring to the table. Lightly butter or oil. I used a metal rectangular pan, lined with baking paper and stood the pears upright. 
• Pour the wine over all the surfaces of the pears.
• Sprinkle the sugar over the pears so that the sugar sticks to the tops and sides of the pears. **
• Bake in a preheated oven 400* oven. I have a convection oven and bake at 180*-190*C (350*F) for about 45 minutes. If you have the time you can baste the pears with the sauce every 15 minutes for a deeper color. 
• The pears should be soft and the wine sauce thicken and deep rich color. 

**Optional spices if you like, but they are quite nice as is.

Do use a simple combination of spices, as too many will over complicate it.

I prefer them without the spices for the pure clean flavor.

Use whole spices so they are easily seen and fished out.
Some suggestions

**A few citrus peels, a few pink or black peppercorns, 6 juniper berries, a stick of cinnamon, broken in two, 2 whole cloves, 4 whole allspice, 2 star anise, a few peeled ginger slices.  

Pear Martine Tart

The weather is still quite frosty....so,
I couldn't resist offering up another recipe out the Nonna Genia Cookbook. This double crusted polenta tart filled with tiny heirloom poached pears, melts in your mouth, leaving you begging for more. Well, that's at least what one of our friends said the other night after his second helping. Next time he cautioned, "forget the rest of the dinner and serve only this tart, it's that good." Spoken like the true Piemontese man that he is.

Yes, I have been on a bit of a polenta kick, but, tis still the season in this part of the world.
Martine pears are an old Piemontese variety that are a small, hard and too dry to eat raw, so they are one of the traditional pears that you will find softened up by the wonderful process of cooking them in a wine bath with plenty of spices. It can be white or red, or you may poach them in a spicy simple syrup. I cooked up a batch enough for the tart and to savor while still warm and fragrant just after the flame goes off. The ones you are using for the tart will need to cool a bit before you peel, slice and pop them into your crust lined tart pan. I cooked mine so that they were still firm since they will be baked in the oven as well. I added small whole plums that are about the size of cherries that I had bottled earlier this year and paired nicely with the pears to add a contrast in flavors between the buttery layers. I peeled my pears after poaching, although if you peel them before they will have a beautiful red color.
I was chatting with the market woman from whom I bought them, and mentioned this recipe from Alba in the Langhe, our famous wine growing region, and not quite an hour away from here. My little vendor lady is 85 years old and was amazed to hear about putting these in a polenta crust. Several other of the vendors were listening in and joined in the discussion. None of them had ever heard of a polenta crust for using with these pears. There ensued a lively discussion, between the stalls. I am continually amazed how different things can be in such short distances here. It makes me think about how cut off people were in the old days and the recipes here vary valley to valley to plains. It is remarkable to me, unlike in America when the latest green bean casserole hits one part of America, it spreads around the country like a virus.
I might just have to make a tart to take down there one of these days, but I think it's out of the question for this year, because I scoured the whole market the other day and nobody had any of these. So I guess that's one for next year and it's on to the next brand of firm pear to try.

Torta di Pere Martine

For the pears
500g (generous pound) Martine pears, (or any hard variety that will hold up when poached)
1/2 bottle of Dolcetto wine, or your favorite fruity red wine
300g (1 1/2 cups) sugar
1 cinnamon stick
10 whole cloves

Mix together in a pot that will hold the lot and simmer, covered, 45 minutes to an hour.
Remove from the syrup, reserve for another poaching or reduce the wine down for a sauce as an accompaniment, is another delish option.

For the crust
75 g-100g (1/4 -1/3 or so cup) flour
150g (1 cup) polenta flour, You could use corn flour, but it is much nicer if a coarser grind is used
100g (1/2 sugar)
100g (1/2c or less) butter, firm, but not right out of the fridge, cut up into smaller pieces
3 egg yolks

Small plums, like green gages, a handful or so
10" or 25cm Tart pan with removable bottom, buttered and floured.

Thoroughly mix the flour and polenta and sugar. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, fork or as I did last time. with my fingers. I worked quickly so the butter didn't melt, but only softened enough to make a nice crumbly texture. I added the egg yolk in last and mix with a fork before gathering it up into a mound. I used a bit of extra flour to make handling easier, as it seems to need just a bit more flour. It will vary I think depending on your texture of your polenta. I let it rest in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. Then I divided it into two slightly uneven portions, rolling then out between sheets of parchment paper. Cling film will work as well, but you might need to refrigerate the sheets if they become too warm. The larger portion went in my buttered and floured tart pan before I layered thick slices of pears all round the bottom and arranged the small plums scattered on top of the pears. Cover with the second sheet and seal.

Bake in a preheated 350*F/180*C for 10-15 minutes, increasing the heat to 375*F/190*C for another 20-25, or until golden brown. Keep an eye on it as it is quite buttery and can go beyond golden quite quickly.
Cool before serving warm with a drizzle or drowning of wine sauce.

Cooks notes
The original recipe calls for peeling and cubing the pears before poaching. Then you pour the whole mixture in to a square pan that has been lined. I had visions of not being able to get the mixture out of the pan from the juices soaking through, so I reserved the liquid for a sauce to go along with and I liked the results very much. I think I would use more of the plums next time, as I enjoyed the combination. You could use cherries in place of the plums.

I find the curvaceous topping appealing, what do think?

Autumn Pear, Parmesan and Walnut Salad

Autumn brings along with it the golds and yellows that are just starting to brush the hillside in front of us. It's also a time of fruitful bounty. There are so many different varieties of apples and pears in the market these days. I am especially enjoying the pears as they normally disappear mid winter as they don't hold out as long as the apples, leaving me waiting for them to come back into season. I place them in the category of favorites and love all the man places the can find their way onto the menu through out the day. One simple dish is a composed salad of thinly sliced ripe pear wedges paired with fresh slivered Parmigiano, sprinkled with toasted walnuts and all drizzled with honey. What could be simpler or tastier?


Insalata di Noci, Pere e Parmigiano

Choose ripe semi soft pears
1/2 pear per person
Parmigiano, sliced from a wedge
walnuts halves, toasted
flavorful honey, I like chestnut for it's distinct flavor, but any local variety will do

Gather all of your ingredients beforehand and just before serving.

• Peel your pears, halve

You could so this ahead and put them in a bath of lemon jusice and water to have them ready before hand ready to pull together just before serving.

• Slice pears on an angle, thinly and fan out on your individual salad plate
• Shave big slices of Parmigiano or Romano, what ever you have on hand
• Toast your walnut halves lightly in a pan on top of the stove or in the oven
• I crumble some of the walnuts over the top and garnish with a few whole halves
• Drizzle honey over all and serve. You can refrigerate for a little while, but your pear might turn brown if you prepare them too far in advance.
  

Autumn celebration on a plate!

Puff Pear Tartlettes to the rescue!

What to do when the dinner guests arrive that your husband thought had canceled?

Pull out the home made ravioli that I try to always have tucked away in our freezer for just such occasions, while he makes his much loved standard cinghiale (wild boar) stew. Fab's mother contributes some porcini for pasta sauce and we're almost covered. What to do for dolci? Fresh out of the semi freddo I try to keep on hand also for the afore mentioned situation. Fab doesn't normally get mixed up that often, but we do have hungry guests drop in with little or no notice, no problem. We try to be prepared, as you do in the hospitality business. I certainly got more than my fair share of practice when I worked for Copper Mt Resort, where there were more last minute surprises to cope with than one could possibly imagine, unless you have been in the food business yourself. In a large resort with multiple restaurants, cafeterias, banquets and John Q Public, you can find yourself scrambling to facilitate birthdays, anniversaries, allergies, celebrities and ballooning banquet numbers at the drop of a hankie. Responding calmly and quickly has been a skill honed over the years and quite frankly, I tend to thrive on the challenge or at least don't get too ruffled,.... "e cosi".

So one of my favorite life savers is the fruit puff pastry tarlette.

Depending on the time of the year or what you have on hand I have found pear or apple to be a consistent winner. You can make your own puff pastry as it isn't as difficult as one thinks,
merely time consuming and the results are tasty and satisfying. I added a very easy to follow"How to Make Puff Pastry" video ( if you can just get past the introduction) from
Ms Glaze's Pomme d'Amour.
I do sometimes make up fresh past sfolgia into sheets to freeze, just like commercial bakers, but have found it to suffer a bit more from freezer burn a bit quicker than I like, so I tend to make it when I know I will have a number of occasions to use it within the period of a couple of weeks. Other wise, commercially made frozen sheets will work beautifully and offer a decent result especially when served warm.

So to that end I took one sheet of puff dough cut it into 6 rectangles,
thawed but cold sheet of puff dough, roughly about
9"(23cm) by 12"(30cm).
When using your own home made dough, you want it about a 1/4 inch thick (1/2 cm).
1 tablespoon of jam, I use my apricot or plum usually, but chestnut cream is delicious also. Spread jam in the middle of the dough into a diagonal mound.
3 pears or apples (tart ones are my preference) peeled, halved, cored and very thinly sliced diagonally is nice, keeping the shape of the fruit as you place it on the prepared dough and fan he fruit out slightly.
Be sure to leaf sufficient dough uncovered to allow the dough to puff up around the fruit when baking.
Brush the edges of the bare dough with a bit of egg wash, (egg white mixed with a splash of water)
Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top of the fruit and bake at a 375*F 190-200*C till puffed and golden. Serve with vanilla or caramel gelato or sauce and serve.
Wait for the oohs and aahs to commence.

How to Make Puff Pastry